Autumn-Admiring Pavilion

The Autumn-Admiring Pavilion (Aiwan Ting) is a small octagonal pavilion on the slopes of Yuelu Mountain, built at the spot where the Tang poet Du Mu stopped to watch the maple leaves and wrote the poem that made the location famous. The pavilion sits in a grove of old maple trees that turn brilliant red and orange in late October and November, making it one of the most visited spots on the mountain during autumn.

Outside the autumn season the pavilion is pleasant but not dramatic; it is the trees and their annual transformation that justify the specific literary association. The pavilion is about twenty minutes' walk up from the Yuelu Academy; the path is well maintained and mostly shaded. Calligraphy plaques inside the pavilion include inscriptions from various historical visitors who came to admire the same maple grove, creating a layered record of literary pilgrimage extending back more than a thousand years.

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A story
The Tang poet Du Mu wrote a quatrain about this pavilion in the ninth century: "Far up in the cold mountains, a stone-paved path; where white clouds form, a few households. I stop my carriage to admire the evening maples — frost leaves are redder than second-month flowers." The last line became one of the most quoted autumnal images in Chinese literature, and autumn visits to the pavilion on Yuelu Mountain have been a Changsha ritual ever since. The current structure has been rebuilt several times but the maple grove surrounding it is old.

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